After turning Peshawar’s Army Public School
into a killing field one of the terrorists phoned his handlers and asked: “We
have killed all the children in the auditorium. What do we do now?” The handler
replied: “Wait for the army people, kill them before blowing yourself up.”
Not just the terrorists,
I’ll tell you who really killed our children. We did. We did by our callous
attitude. We did by holding forth thoughtlessly, unwittingly becoming
apologists for terrorism. We did by electing and tolerating terrible
leadership. We did by tolerating the demented sermonising of demonic mullahs in
mosques, madrassas and political parties. Thus did we
allow terrorists to thrive. They are the products of our perfidy. They just
press triggers. We give them guns, not books as Malala lamented. Most of all, I
am angry with myself for not standing up more against society’s duplicity.
The problem is that most
of our men don’t have balls; our women do. Why not hand Pakistan over to women?
They would do a damn sight better job than men who are only good at
contemplating their navels and then haranguing us with whatever nonsense comes
to their challenged minds.
Control your anger,
Humayun. Cut to the chase. Beating chests won’t do. Learn from the tragedy of
the coldblooded massacre of 144 people including 132 schoolchildren, analyse
mistakes and find corrections. Time to understand: THIS IS OUR WAR. Own it,
fight it. Understand that terrorism is akin to a venom-spewing tree. Plucking
its leaves, cutting branches and chopping its trunk doesn’t work. Destroy its
roots in the ground and in our minds where they are most dangerous.
It took this tragedy to
bring our ‘misleaders’ together in a ‘Political Fest’. A photograph of these
geniuses makes one’s heart sink: are these the men who are going to lead our
destiny? God help us, but He will not until we help ourselves first. Start by
kicking misleaders out of our body politic that they have been polluting for
years. Many of them called the terrorists “stakeholders”, “sulking
compatriots”, “one of us” with whom we must hold a dialogue and allow them to
open an office here. They must be mollycoddled and brought back in the fold. We
lost eight precious months and the element of surprise before the army launched
an operation against them with a reluctant prime minister going along. These
men around the table who would lead our destiny admit that elections were
rigged, that there is corruption and yet would support an illegal government on
the pretext of supporting sham democracy and a political system that benefits
them and them alone.
Lacking originality, the
Political Fest decided to set up a committee. Yippee! The terrorists must be
quaking with fright. The army forced them to agree to hang all convicted
terrorists forthwith.
It took this tragedy to bring our
‘misleaders’ together in a ‘Political Fest’. A photograph of these geniuses
makes one’s heart sink: are these the men who are going to lead our destiny?
What should be done?
1. Formation of a
National War Government even if it comprises buffoons to get national consensus
on the new anti-terrorism strategy.
2. Parliament should
immediately declare a counter Jihad against fake Jihadi terrorists.
3. Declare a National
War Emergency. Don’t let the fake treason case against General Musharraf weigh
on what passes for your minds.
4. Empower the National
Counter Terrorism Authority, give it funds and a head. Don’t quibble over
whether a general (who would do a damn sight better job) or a pet civilian
should head it. If government can spend billions on metro-buses and motorways,
surely it can give much-needed fewer funds to NACTA. Problem is, motorways and
metro buses give kickbacks; NACTA doesn’t. For God’s sake get satiated now you
politicians.
5. Launch a simultaneous
countrywide operation against terrorists of all ilk.
6. Give Afghanistan 24
hours to hand over terrorists and separatists to us or we will come to get them
ourselves. Their lament that we don’t give their terrorists to them should be
agreed to. There should be no such thing as “their terrorists” and “our
terrorists”, “Good Taliban” and “Bad Taliban” just as there are no ‘Good
Demons’ and ‘Bad Demons’. Demons are demons, period. All terrorists are everyone’s
terrorists and should be dealt with collectively. Forget this fifth front
nonsense.
7. Strengthen laws so
that terrorists don’t easily get bail.
8. Establish summary
courts run on due process with one appeal. Implement sentences immediately so
terrorists don’t sit in jail foisting hell.
9. Create a narrative to
counter the pernicious brainwashing narrative of terrorists and their
sympathisers.
10. Kick out
pro-terrorist mullahs from all mosques and madrassas.
11. Strengthen PEMRA to
properly regulate media so that it doesn’t let these demons and their
apologists spew their demented venom and pollute minds.
12. Unite people against
terrorism government must end State Terrorism, like the Model Town massacre.
13. Make contemporary
curricula for all educational institutions and ban the terrorist-producing
Nebraska curriculum that the US made to create Mujahedeen against the Soviets.
It is easy to jump to
conclusions in a storm of emotions. But the bloody outrage has boomeranged
against the terrorists who tried to lower our morale by coinciding their
heinous act with the fall of Dacca on December 16, spread terror and nip future
soldiers in the bud by killing army and civilian children in an army school.
This is the fallout, good and bad:
1. People are finally
accepting that the war on terror is our war and we are fighting it for
ourselves.
2. Instead of showing
the army up as ineffective, public support for the army has increased, though
one wonders how many more straws the army camel’s back can take before it
breaks. Or is it a mule from the famous ‘Mule Battalion’. Many want the army to
take over again, but what they should actually demand is true democracy through
change of system.
3. They have darned
somewhat the tattered civil-military relationship. This should dilute Nawaz
Sharif’s “terrible fear” of army intervention. It won’t as long as he doesn’t
go too far down the path of imbecility. The Peshawar carnage should show him
that situations can change instantaneously and cause reaction. He should
remember how his world changed when he illegally sacked General Musharraf,
hijacked his plane and tried to send it to India. Bizarre is a word not unknown
to us.
4. They succeeded in
showing Imran Khan’s KPK provincial government as incompetent.
5. They succeeded in
ending Imran’s protests against election fraud and prevented the shutting down
of the country on December 18. This has helped Nawaz Sharif more than the
terrorists. Perhaps it also gave Imran the chance to get out of a blind alley
because he wouldn’t ratchet up his protest by storming the citadels of the
great. He is convinced that this system can put him in office through honest
elections, little realising that honest elections aren’t possible in this system.
Who does it benefit,
advertently or inadvertently?
1. The government under
inordinate pressure, though I am not suggesting for a moment that it was behind
the massacre.
2. India, for it would
love Nawaz Sharif to remain in office and continue his India-pandering. I am
certainly suggesting that India might be behind the dastardly deed, as it has
been behind many before.
3. Afghanistan perhaps
for it makes Pakistan more dependent on its cooperation.
Establish summary courts run on due process
with one appeal. Implement sentences immediately so terrorists don’t sit in
jail foisting hell
Whose fault is it? It is
our collective fault for not standing up to state and non-state terrorism and
not supporting something good when it is being done. We opposed President
Musharraf when he tried to cleanse the Lal Masjid of terrorist mullahs not
because we like them but because we hated Musharraf more. We supported chief
justice Iftikhar Chaudhry when Musharraf sacked him not because we liked him
but because we liked Musharraf less. A confused ‘elected’ government restored
Iftikhar Chaudhry and his cohorts who in turn restored the terrorist Mullah
Burqa to Lal Masjid. Today he supports the school massacre as justified
reaction to the army’s anti-terrorist operation in North Waziristan and
government lets him be. That people are protesting outside the mosque means
that they have finally woken up and are learning. They should storm it and do
what Musharraf was forced to leave undone. Refuse to pray in the mosque until
it is purified and cleansed of these Devil’s demons.
The deficiency of
testosterone producing orbs primarily afflicts our politicians, pseudo
intellectuals, most male media anchors and analysts. Our religious leaders are
semi-literate and so mentally challenged that they twist the Word of God to
achieve their ends, shamelessly preach it and act against the Word of God, like
“though shalt not kill” for killing one human being is akin to killing the
whole of humanity. Fazlur Rahman who exploits religion for his politics and has
the temerity to call himself ‘Maulana’ says his heart beats as one with the
Taliban. Today to save his politics he says that killing children is not Jihad.
Haven’t children been killed by terrorists before you moron?
An angry lady messaged
the growing national sentiment to me: “Children were shot in the face. Children
were shot in the head. Children were dragged out from under the chairs, under
the tables, and shot. At pointblank. Methodically. Coldly. Clinically. To
avenge the deaths of militants who were wreaking havoc on innocent Pakistanis
in myriad acts of terror. It’s retribution, they say.
“I have nothing to say
here. You call yourself a Muslim and yet you do what Allah forbids you to do:
to perpetrate a war in His name where you kill children. Where you kill people
who have never harmed you. You are not just Pakistan’s enemies but you are also
your own worst enemy.
“Before a court
penalises you, before the bullet of a soldier kills you, you will die a
thousand deaths. The screams of the children you killed today, the wails of the
parents whose children you killed today, the pain of the nation whose young you
killed today will not let you be in peace. Until you die.
“Words have lost their
value to express the magnitude of the damage done to the hearts and souls of a
common Pakistani. May Allah SWT rest the innocent departed souls in peace in
heaven and give courage and forbearance to the bereaved families to bear this
colossal loss. Ameen. I feel extremely sorry for every Pakistani mother especially
for those who have lost their treasures of a lifetime. May Allah protect our
children.
“First step: Mr Prime
Minister we don’t need statements from you. Stop showing your sorrow and stop
these sorry statements. Within this week announce hanging of the 500 plus
terrorists under custody and hang them publicly. We don’t need your wordy pious
statements. The whole nation should ask only one thing: public hanging of the
arrested terrorists. Our slogan for the campaign against terrorism and
terrorists for the government and the armed forces is: ‘An Eye for an Eye. A
tooth for a tooth. Hang them all. Hang ’em High.”
The intrepid Muhammad
Hanif wrote: “There is no need to offer prayers for the souls of the children
killed in Peshawar. What possible sin could 16-year-olds have committed?
Pakistan’s political and military leadership is requested not to worry about
the children’s afterlife. When they raise their hands in prayer, they should
pray for their own forgiveness. And they should look at their hands closely,
lest they be stained with blood.” I would add from Macbeth: “Out, out damned
spot.”
I am not done.
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